Category: Blog Entries

I laid out this project back in December, you can reread the project in the archives.  The deadline for submission for the fashion show at the Surface Design Association’s Conference, Off the Grid in Kansas City, MO May28-May31, 2009 is coming up fast.  I believe it is Feb 1, 2009.  http://www.surfacedesign.org Looking back over the projects I’ve outlined so far, I want to work on the ones that most fit the fashion show theme for a surface design conference, rather than a handweaver’s conference.  Project one, the frosted florals fabric involves hand dyed warps and some textural weaving in the structure choice, and I think would be dynamic on the runway and in photographs.  So for now I’ll concentrate on that one.  I do my best work, or rather my most productive output under deadlines…

I have two possibilities for this project.  The December 2008 Burda had some gorgeous dresses involving draping and pleating, two would be effective with this slinky rayon fabric, and the unbroken length of the dyed fabric down the front would be stunning.  So I’ve done a sketch, and made the pattern up into an actual dress to really see which I like on my body, and then I’ve done a preliminary layout for each of the two designs I’m contemplating.  The styling may be wonderful, but if the patterns don’t fit on the narrow fabric, no sense pursuing it.

This is the first choice, and I love the soft pleating and drape which really shows off the fabric striping.  The pattern is a bit wider than the fabric, but not by much, and I can always do my famous cheat, where I find a narrow piece of the fabric on the selvedge, that continues the coloration of the area where the fabric is missing, and butt the two selvedges together, making just that area wide enough for the pattern piece.  I do it all the time, and it is really invisible, I will hand stitch, or machine stitch with a very very narrow zig zag, catching the two selvedges.

I’ll follow up with the second choice tomorrow.  Stay tuned…

Project 5 is a bolt of fabric I had sitting on the loom for a long time.  It wasn’t really exciting me, after all the dyed warps I’d been doing over the previous year, it was sort of ordinary, yet the subtle coloring when you looked closely at the fabric was exquisite.  The fabric will work well for a more classic coat, mid weight, and I can bulk it up with an interlining.

This fabric, called Arctic Sky, was based on a forecast from Handwoven Magazine I did for the Jan/Feb 2007 issue of Handwoven Magazine.  I loved the rich blues into plums, spiced up with the new lime green, or rather new at the time, lime green has become the new neutral.  It is a fantastic color for a handweaver to use intermittently within a fabric.

I originally set this warp up on my 8 shaft, not because it needed to be, but when I have sticky wool warps, I find that by spreading them over eight shafts instead of four, I get less skipped sticky warp issues.

I have about 6 yards of 21″ wide fabric, not a huge amount, but enough I think for a trench type coat, and I have a beautiful silk Sari from my husband’s gift stash, in a rich green, that might work with the fabric.  I’m big on using what I already have.  And I have this odd little sash/narrow scarf that I felted with a friend, in that fabulous lime green color.  I can see using the natural edge of the felt as a narrow accent down the edge of a band or belt.  It is a strong color, so just an accent would be appropriate.  Almost like a piping.   I could really use a good spring trench coat.

Meanwhile, Brianna is making slow steady progress on the placemat exchange warp.  She had the chain wound by early evening last night, and started on sleying the reed.  She finished putting the warp chain into the reed before she went to bed last night, and when she got home from work today, she started threading the overshot pattern. She just called over to say she was half finished.  The fact that she seems to really enjoy warping the loom just makes my heart sing!  Yippee!

I was born the end of May, which would make me a Gemini.  That means there is two of me, and though it sounds great in theory, instead of working as a team, the two of me are at constant battle with ourselves.  My techie husband spent all yesterday, unbeknownst to me, figuring out a blog site that would integrate with my existing webserver.  Apparently eBlogger doesn’t.  So when he announced first thing this morning that he had it all laid out and I should check it out, I panicked.  My one half was instantly annoyed that I would have to relearn something I’ve just started, figure out how to redirect everyone to a different blog site, and was that even the wisest thing to do, and the other half of my two selves thought it made a lot of sense, to work directly through my own server, and I’d have more flexibility with add-ons and viewer comments, etc.   And since I’ve only just started the blog, now would make the most sense.  Still…

So, for now, until I have the new blogging site figured out, and apparently I can bring in the posts from the old one for continuity, I’ll blog duplicate postings.

My new Blog Site is www.weaversew.com/wordblog

Thursday, January 1, 2009

Happy New Year! I love January. It is my favorite month of the year, because it is a long month, uninterrupted by holidays, calendar events, school activities, and it is too cold to do anything outside, like gardening. I’ve traditionally done my most productive work in January, plus I adore the idea of a fresh start. I’m not big on resolutions, just the idea of a clean page, sort of like opening a new journal, where I can begin the new year with fresh ideas, and see where the year takes me.
I have a lot to accomplish in the next few months. I won’t really start to travel again until the summer, when conference season begins, except for the Association of Southern California Handweavers Conference in Riverside, the beginning of March. http://www.colorconnects.org/
So I have an unusually large block of time to explore things, work on the projects I’ve been outlining, and among other things, learn more about website development, redo my whole website, and develop one for my guild. I got the new Adobe Creative Suite 4 for Christmas, which contains Dreamweaver, which will help bring my poor Microsoft Front Page developed website into the 21st century! I love learning new things…
So, my daughter (who actually has a name, Brianna) is winding the 12+ yard warp behind me as I write, for our placemat exchange, she initially balked when I said she had to wind 384 ends, but with two cones of 10/2 warp, it goes twice as fast, and every couple of minutes she calls out that she has done another inch worth of warp. I showed her how to use a counter I made up, from a small basket, pierced with a bamboo skewer, where I’ve strung sewing machine bobbins from a machine I no longer have. With two threads in her hands, finger in-between so they go through the cross independent of each other, each pass up and down on the mill equals 4 warp threads. If she does that six times, then she has 24 threads which equals 1″ of warp. The mats are 16″ wide. So she settled down when I mapped it out that way, only 16 times instead of 384 threads. Each time she goes up to the top of the mill and back down, she slides a little bobbin on the skewer. That way she can listen to tunes and only moderately pay attention. Which is great for a 16 year old with ADHD!

Wednesday, December 31, 2008

It is the last day of 2008. A quick note as I fly out the door to yet another holiday celebration. The fruit salad is made, the house tidy, the wood stove warm and inviting, the blustery wind howls and swirls the new six inches of snow, and for today, all is right with the world. At least here in my corner of NJ.
I spent the afternoon setting up the draft for an overshot placemat exchange that my daughter and I are doing with the Jockey Hollow Guild. 10/2 natural Perle Cotton warp, and a 5/2 Perle weft, my daughter and I are both participating, each one part of a group of eight. So we will be weaving a total of 16 placemats, I want to get her winding the 12 yard warp we need, so she can get the threading started while still on vacation. She is a new weaver, at 16, and as a member of Jockey Hollow, she participated in her first sample exchange last June. She did an 8 shaft huck sample, nothing like starting out with eight shafts for your first project! She did a great job, and at one point, looked up from behind the loom and said, “Mom, I’m really enjoying threading these heddle things, I’ve figured out the pattern and this is like a logic game.”

The placemats are overshot, I picked a simple overshot pattern, called Dog Tracks, I had done in a class of 18th Century structures I took at the Cincinnati Convergence in 2000. (see above sample in red). I liked it because it was simple, and because my daughter works on Saturdays at a dog kennel.

This was going to be her adventure, but as luck would have it, the placemat exchange had more volunteers than it needed and not enough for two groups of eight. So I agreed to be part of a second team, and thought I’d streamline the process by piggybacking onto my daughter’s warp. This is probably a huge mistake, but I didn’t want to tie-up two looms all spring.

So my daughter picked purple for her weft, and instructed me to pick something that would work with her purple, as she was confident that when I died, she would get my set of mats and then have 16 total. I love the way teenagers think… So I picked a celadon green, it sort of goes with my dishes, but I know my daughter will want to put them away for her future.
Oddly enough, I’ve never woven a dish towel. I do yardage, I’ve always done yardage, and I’m not so much into functional textiles. At least ones that I weave. She is on her way, and I have a suspicion that she will weave her first dish towel long before I do…